Supporting Facts, a website that collects interesting articles from mainstream sources, has posted an article by the Wall Street Journal about the decline of the industrial working class. I'm sure the conclusions drawn will cause a stir. What do you make of it?
To me, it seems these developments, if a new permanent rather than cyclical feature of capitalism, will merely intensify the class struggle as workers become even further alienated from the process of production. The technological advances aiding production, which are occuring on an accelerating curve, will also produce greater economic slumps in the future by causing rates of profit to fall in a dramatic, rather than gradual fashion. Speculative capital investment will also intensify these crashes, as we have seen in the last twenty years. Is this a correct assessment?
It must also be noted that the analysis is flawed by looking at the 20 most industrialized countries. I'd suggest that most manufacturing is in developing countries right now where labour is far cheaper and the class struggle against capitalism is in an embryonic stage compared to the industrialized nations (in terms of unionism, labour laws, democratic advances).
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